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CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

RACHEL

The alarm blared from my phone as I blinked my heavy eyes open. Silas still dozed next to me, unfazed, his grip tight around my waist even in a deep sleep. I’d booked the nine a.m. train to Penn Station, and I wished I could lounge in bed until Silas’s game this afternoon.

Losing Becker would be rough for the team, whether it was for a few weeks or the season. Silas had sounded so tired and defeated when he’d called me, I couldn’t let him take this on all alone.

I guessed that was what it was like when you had a partner in life. There was no way I could just wait for his phone call after the game without seeing in person that he was okay.

And he was, or he would be. Knowing that didn’t make leaving easier, and even if I had time to stay, I couldn’t.

What reason would I have to travel to a Bats game on a workday? I had nothing more to do for the account at work. Everything else we were doing for them was a regular marketing campaign without the PR. Their sponsorship of my sister’s team had ended with their season back in June, so I had no ties to the Bats or explanation for being here.

Other than being in love with their manager.

I kept trying to think of loopholes for that stupid clause in our contract. The marketing initiatives were ending, and Silas wasn’t the one signing the checks for promotion since he was just an employee of the organization. Maybe if we could prove that we started dating after the partnership was over, we could get away with it.

But I was smart enough to know that wouldn’t happen. Even after our dealings with the Bats were finished, the stain on our reputation for getting too involved with a client was still fresh enough to allow for no exceptions.

If it were just me, I could leave before I had to tell anyone about my personal life—that should have always been personal —and take freelance jobs. I’d done well in freelance, other than scraping by on out-of-pocket insurance payments.

Taylor needed health insurance and a parent who thought of her more than the man in her life. I wasn’t our mother and still put my sister first, but I couldn’t deny how much Silas meant to me and how terrible it was to hide him and us.

“I’m pretending I didn’t hear that alarm. And that I get to keep you in bed all day long.”

“Um, you have a game to coach,” I said, still not making a move to get out of bed as Silas buried his face into my neck, his stubble scraping my skin as he peppered kisses across my shoulder.

“No time for sad breakfast?”

I laughed, remembering our first morning in a hotel room. I hadn’t wanted to get out of his bed then either but for much different reasons.

I’d see him again, but other than close friends and family, no one would know. I hated how it cheapened what we had, and I really hated how I couldn’t figure out a way around it.

“No. I need to get the train back to Penn, and the station here is about thirty minutes away.”

“I don’t like you traveling all this way by yourself.”

I laughed, finally pushing away from Silas and swinging my legs over the side of the bed.

“I’m fine. Plus, all that time alone is good for plotting my next book. Thanks to the hot ballplayer in the bar last night, I have a ton of ideas.”

Silas’s mouth curved into a sleepy smile as he watched me pluck my clothes off the floor.

“How do you start? A book, I mean. I’ve always wondered where writers begin.”

“Everyone is different,” I said as I slid on my bra. “Personally, I start with tropes.”

“You start with what?” Silas asked me on a yawn.

“I guess I start with what I want the story to be. Like a second chance, age gap, forced proximity, friends to lovers. Maybe think of it as the colors I use to paint the picture.”

“What are our colors?” he asked, lounging against the headboard, resting the back of his head on his hand. His eyes were hazy as they fixed on me. He was so beautiful, and leaving him was already excruciating. “Besides age gap.”

I laughed at his narrowed eyes.

“Well,” I started after I pulled on my tank top and sat on the edge of the bed, “forbidden lovers, forced proximity. Since we couldn’t seem to escape each other.”

“I never wanted to escape you.”

“Same,” I said. “And celebrity, since you know, all the reels. And it always comes with a happily ever after.” I stood, bending over the bed to brush his lips. “Guaranteed.”

I scratched at the extra stubble on his chin.

“You’re damn right it does.”

“I better go because you need to shave before you get into uniform.”

The sun bled through the hotel curtains. I wished I’d booked an earlier train to lessen the chance of running into anyone on the team. We’d taken a big risk in the bar last night, but I hadn’t seen anyone from the Bats, and the team they were playing didn’t know me.

We were either going to come clean or get caught since we were becoming sloppy. The scary part was, even though I was supposed to, I was beginning not to care.

“You didn’t have to walk me all the way outside,” I told Silas as we strolled through the lobby. “I don’t even have luggage to carry.”

“I will get you into a cab, and then you can text me from the train station here and when you get to Penn.”

“Any specific stops you want to hear from me in between?”

“Just humor me,” he said, squinting at me as a cab pulled up to the entrance. Other than the driver and the hotel staff, no one was around but us.

“I love you,” he said, pressing his mouth to mine for a quick but toe-curling kiss. “Get home safe, Slugger.”

“Have a good game, Coach,” I said, smoothing my hand down his shirt as I brushed his lips. “I love you too.”

I stepped into the cab and scooted toward the middle of the seat as Silas shut the door.

Keeping my gaze straight ahead despite feeling Silas’s eyes on me as the driver pulled away, I pulled out my phone and searched for my train ticket. I hoped my phone had enough battery life until I arrived home. I’d forgotten to pack a charger in my mad rush out the door as I’d been too preoccupied with getting to and being with Silas. I didn’t think to borrow his before we drifted off to sleep.

Maybe one day, one of us wouldn’t have to sneak out in the morning like a thief in the night, but until then, I had to accept this empty, frustrating-as-fuck feeling as normal whenever we parted ways.

Despite how much I hated it.

I arrived home around one and found Auden working from my kitchen table. Taylor was watching TV, at least out of her pajamas today. I was letting her lounge until her softball camp started next week, another expense that reminded me of how reckless my impromptu trip to see my secret boyfriend had been.

Or forbidden boyfriend. Either term pissed me off.

“Hey, guys. Nice to see you awake, sis.”

Taylor grunted a hello as she burrowed her head into the couch cushion.

“Hey, girl. Have a good trip?” Auden asked with a lilt to her voice.

Taylor had been at a friend’s house when I’d left, so she hadn’t seen me all dolled up in a red dress and lipstick. She was a teenager who noticed more than I liked to think about, but if she’d seen what I’d looked like before I’d left for Boston, finding an innocent way to explain would have made me break out in a cold sweat.

“I had a great trip. I’m still a little worried about him, but he’ll be okay. I hope they win so what’s going on with Becker doesn’t get into their heads.”

I fished my phone out of my purse and plugged it in after I set it on the table next to my work laptop. My phone had died right before my train pulled into Penn so I couldn’t text Silas like he’d asked me to.

“I told Gayle I’d log on late this afternoon just to check in, but no meetings so I don’t have to fix myself.”

“Lucky you. I have a management meeting at four. Who does that on a Friday afternoon? Personally, I come in checked out on a Friday.”

I laughed until I noticed the slew of notifications on my screen and three missed calls from Gayle as my phone chirped back to life.

The alerts were from social media. I didn’t get many notifications other than during a book launch, so to see this many was already unnerving enough to kick up my heartbeat.

I swiped on one and my heart seized. It was a shot of me at the bar next to Silas. You couldn’t see where his hand was, but both of us looked at each other with enough intent not to be innocent.

A sports gossip influencer had tagged my author account in the shot and wrote, “Silas Jones has a hot date as Becker waits to find out if his season is over.”

How had they recognized me? My phone shook in my hands as my vision blurred.

“What’s going on?” Auden asked, gripping my hand. “You look like you’re having a heart attack.”

“Because I am,” I said, my voice quavering from the rapid and sudden increase in my pulse. I went to the next notification, and a surge of panic rushed through my veins. It was a picture of me, draped outside the door of Silas’s hotel room as he approached, the logo on the back of his Bats T-shirt facing the camera.

“R.M. Dioro, an indie romance novelist linked to Silas Jones, has also been identified as Rachel Manning, copywriter for the same PR agency that has put the Brooklyn Bats on everyone’s radar this season. Now that’s what I call doing business.”

It hadn’t even been a full day since that photo had been taken, and I had already been doxed and humiliated.

I slid my phone to Auden, unable to speak, and I let the photos, tags, and notifications speak for themselves.

I didn’t want to know what else they’d seen and posted, and right now, they’d posted enough.

Not only was I seen with Silas, my pen name and personal identity had been linked and shared all over the place, and this was just one platform. Influencers like this always cross-posted over a ton of different sites.

I’d been ready to be caught as Silas and Rachel, but I hadn’t planned on coming out as R.M. Dioro to everyone. I didn’t hide it and would show my face when I had to on my author pages and events, but I had a pen name for a reason.

I could choose who I told about my other career, and while I’d had moderate success as an author, I wasn’t big enough to be recognized on the street or during a work meeting. I’d been happy and comfortable with that and only told who I felt needed to know or who would be supportive and safe.

I wasn’t ashamed of writing romance. I was proud of all the books I’d written and always believed that it was a privilege and a blessing to be able to get lost in the worlds I created. But not everyone viewed romance as the amazing genre it was. I was looked down upon by some and, in some spaces, ostracized by others.

I didn’t want that to extend to Taylor.

I glanced at the back of my sister’s head as she watched a rerun of Gilmore Girls , totally oblivious to how our lives had just imploded. Some of the moms at her middle school had loved my books, but I didn’t want her to endure any teasing in her new school because of me.

Now, I’d put a double target on my head. I was having an affair with a local celebrity that I’d done business with, and everyone knew I wrote kissing books for a side hustle. The wrong kids could torture Taylor with that information if they wanted to, and the thought triggered shame so potent I tasted bile in the back of my throat.

“Holy shit,” Auden whispered.

“Those photos just went up this morning, and look how many likes and comments.” I sucked in a long breath as I gripped the edge of my table. “This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not. For it to go viral this fast, he had to have been followed. Unless you both holed up in your apartments and never saw each other, this was going to happen eventually. And I hate that you ever had to make allowances for this bullshit in the first place.”

“So did I, but I wanted to tell people on my terms. About everything. And since I have three missed calls from Gayle, I guess that ship has pretty much sailed.” I glanced at my sister, still oblivious to her guardian’s meltdown.

“Like mother, like daughter,” a nasty voice taunted in my head.

It wasn’t totally wrong, but my mother wouldn’t have cared about reputations, safety, or a steady job.

I wasn’t wired that way, and I had no idea what to do or how to control the train wreck that had already gone too far off the rails to even begin to fix.

“This is not as bad as it seems,” Auden said, her words coming a little too fast to be soothing. “Stuff like this fizzles quickly.”

I let out a hysterical laugh.

“Which part? Where I not only got caught violating my employment contract, they have me splayed in front of Silas’s hotel room door in my Jessica fucking Rabbit dress like some hooker, and they tagged me and the company. Or that my side job of writing romance just got blasted to everyone right before my little sister starts high school.”

“I am sure it will fade by then. And hey, maybe it will give her some street cred, having a sister who’s a famous author.”

“Aud, famous and in famous are two very different things.” I let my head fall back, already exhausted by all that could be coming at us.

I’d known this was a risk, but one stupid mistake took risk into reckless.

It was odd to feel envy for my mother. She’d managed to move on without a care or regret when she’d fucked everything up, and she lived with herself and her choices just fine.

The worst part about all of this was that I’d never be able to do any of that, all while figuring out where the hell to go from here.